Tangle in the Dark - Kassidor

snowflakes to brown dwarfs, are the most interesting thing tobe seen, the stars remain fixed thru the whole voyage, exceptthe extra one directly ahead or behind, Sol.During the voyage they passed close enough to detectthree lone gas giants almost big enough to call brown dwarfsand countless planetoids large enough to still retain someinternal heat. The iceballs that were known as comets whenthey fell into the gravity well of a star hung in space by thebillions between each star, and snowflakes of frozen gasseshung in deadly veils all thru space, denser in the galaxy'sfringes where there was not nearly enough starlight to meltthem. Those snowflakes they passed by were the only motionone could detect out here.He had to wait quite a bit longer than he anticipated togive his presentation. There was another starship detected ona parallel course to their own and that was of great concern tothe captain. They decided it must be the 16 Cygni expeditionreturning. They were returning because the candidate planetturned out to be worse than Venus. That was a Chinesesleepership called Pink Dawn with a multi-generational crew.It would presumably side with the mortals so the captaintreated it as a potential enemy. He called the senior officers toa side meeting for the better part of an hour. Thom wonderedwhat the odds were of encountering that expedition randomlyin the 1.4x10 31 cubic miles of space between here and Sol?He was sitting with Darryl, but as usual, as soon as theywere not in a formal meeting, Darryl began arguing with his185